


a heart for the hopeless

by InvadingThoughts



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: (e.g. everything you’d expect from the game), Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Dead by Daylight au, Established Relationship, Graphic Descriptions of Injuries, Mild Gore, Multi, Pre-Relationship, Serious Injuries, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 19:25:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15825381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InvadingThoughts/pseuds/InvadingThoughts
Summary: With the headset periodically buzzing in his ears and how his steps seem to shake his brain around in his skull as he runs, Ryan foresees a headache coming.He doesn’t, however, foresee Jeremy’s scream and the slightly wet sound that follows after it.





	a heart for the hopeless

**Author's Note:**

> Ryan said "what two men do with a lady in the forest is not your business” in one of the recent dbd videos and it absolutely sent my mind when into overdrive, so this is his fault.

With the headset periodically buzzing in his ears and how his steps seem to shake his brain around in his skull as he runs, Ryan foresees a headache coming.

He doesn’t, however, foresee Jeremy’s scream and the slightly wet sound that follows after it.

Instantly, he falters at the sound, losing pace and almost tripping. The forest around him is too large and way too good at echoing sounds, so there’s no way pinpointing Jeremy’s direction. But if he knew, he’d try and play distraction. Take a hit. However, there’s no movement in the trees and no tell-tale red stain, so all Ryan can do is force himself to keep moving.

After a second, Trevor’s voice cuts through the static. It’s slightly out of breath and shaky. “Jeremy? You alright there, pal?” he asks and Lindsay’s quick-to-follow hum of concern tells him that they all heard the scream.

It’s Jeremy’s answering silence that hits Ryan in the gut, almost like a punch, and the line remains quiet after that. There’s not much that words can really do now, now it’s just a waiting game, till  _she_  catches Jeremy or he gets away.

Ryan prays for the second option.

When the trees finally part, giving way to the small, dilapidated brick frame of a half-built building, the flickering overhead lights of a generator come into view and Ryan sighs.

As he kneels by the sparking machine, he considers whispering something over the coms. Either to Jeremy or the others, but in the end, he holds his tongue. The thumping in his chest—the quick and panicked beats of his heart—it tells him  _she’s_  near and so he doesn’t dare risk it.

Instead, he carefully slides the cover off of the generator—exposing the insides and the wires of the dreaded machine—and with surgical precision, he starts rewiring it. He estimates he’s a fourth of the way through when the sound of hurried steps approach him and Ryan whips his head up to stare at his visitor.

With an arm wrapped around his middle and a slight hunch to his form, it’s Jeremy who grimaces back at him as a pool of blood forms under him. Against his stomach, his fingers flex uselessly.

“I think I lost her,” he whispers, “but we should probably go somewhere else.”

Ryan pushes himself to his feet with his knuckles, reaching out to offer Jeremy an arm of support, who sinks into his side easily. “Good idea,” he replies, maneuvering them past the ruined brick frame and to the edge of the fenceline.

Once they’re tucked behind a tree, Ryan gives himself permission to breathe again. It’s such a steady stream of blood leaking from the lad, seemingly never-ending, but Ryan knows better. He’s watched Geoff bleed out before, face down in the dirt as his breathing grew laboured with each passing second.

Jeremy has an expiration date now. Each second of blood loss is equal to an amount of fine sand falling through an hourglass.

Ryan has to force himself to ignore his shaking hands.

Without hesitation, he tears a strip from the bottom of his shirt, exposing his stomach to the cool night air. Jeremy hesitates to move his arm at first, holding it tight against himself, but Ryan wraps his fingers around his wrist.

“I need to bandage it,” he whispers, the pace of Jeremy’s pulse unintentionally calming him.  _Alive_ , his mind supplies,  _alive and safe_.

Through the headset, Lindsay lets out a string of curse words and both Ryan and Jeremy tense. They wait for a scream, a hiss or a groan, but the only thing that echoes through the treeline is a rather distinctive screeching sound.

Under his fingers, Jeremy’s pulse beats faster and Ryan knows his own is doing the same.

“Lindsay?” Jeremy whispers.

Trevor’s voice crackles over the coms. “She’s by the shack. Goddamnit—bitch, I think she saw me. Lindsay’s hit.”

“You safe, Trevor?” Jeremy asks, unconsciously guiding Ryan’s hands to his wounds. It’s enough to snap Ryan out of his stupor, and he refocuses himself back onto looking after Jeremy.

“Uh, shit. Nope, nah, not safe, Jeremy. She’s really on my ass—woah!” The sound of a pallet dropping drowns out his words and then it’s static again.  _Trevor had a flashlight_ , Ryan reminds himself,  _he’ll be fine_.

“Ryan, we should help him…” Jeremy mutters, pulling away from his touch. His bandages are haphazard at best, but they manage to keep all of Jeremy’s blood inside of him, so Ryan takes the win.

“Trevor will be fine. He’s a slippery little fuck,” he tries, not wanting to chance it with a murderer. Especially not with one who can phase through walls. Instead, he jerks his head back to the generator, pleading with his eyes for Jeremy to let this one go.

Jeremy sucks in a shaky breath. “O-Okay, you stay here and work the generator. I—I’ll… I’ll go and see if I can help,” he replies and Ryan’s stomach drops.

“Don’t!” he hisses, but Jeremy doesn’t hesitate. He just turns his back on Ryan and starts heading towards where Trevor last said he was. Ryan watches him leave until he becomes nothing more than a shadow in the distance and then Ryan’s running, following.

He weaves through the trees, ignoring everything around him. He moves without any care for the noise he makes, only slowing when Jeremy comes back into view.

Pressed up against Lindsay.

Covering her lips with desperate little kisses.

Fingers white as they grip her arms.

Cowardly, Ryan doesn’t announce himself; rather, he just steps back and tucks himself behind a tree, choosing to watch silently. His heart pounds in his chest, but Jack’s not anywhere near him.

“—you answer, huh? I thought she’d… you. God,  _fuck_. You scared… out of me,” Jeremy mumbles, voice so low that Ryan can’t make out all of it. He wants to step out from behind the tree and announce himself so they know he’s there. It’d be smart to do it now before they start getting intimate again, but Ryan can’t.

They look content in the moment together and his presence is only going to ruin that.

“The bitch was chasing me, what else was I supposed to do!” Lindsay replies, loud despite their situation and Jeremy huffs. He mutters something against her lips, words unintelligible, but whatever they are, they make her smile when Jeremy leans in to kiss her again.

Ryan squeezes his eyes shut and bites at his bottom lip. A whine builds in the back of his throat and he can taste blood on his tongue, but it’s an earned punishment. A wave of guilt hits him as he steps back into the shadows, terrified of being caught.

After a moment, they slowly separate, pulling away from each other with obvious reluctance and Ryan forces himself to look down at his broken shoes.

He waits for them to leave, for them to go searching for Trevor, all the while knowing that once they do, Jeremy will throw himself into harm’s way. He’s done it before and he’ll continue doing for however much longer they all last.

He’ll take the hook just to give them all a chance to escape, but that doesn’t mean Ryan has to  _let him_  this time.

With careful steps, Ryan tries to slip away from the two of them. His intent is to circle around them, make it to Trevor before either of them can and then catch Jack’s attention first. He wants to do it quietly, without alerting them, but the second he moves, he realises how hopeless that idea is.

They’ve been here for a while now, they’ve learned to listen to every little sound around them. It’s how they survive; It’s how they’ve kept their hope alive.

So, all it takes is one step and a branch to snap underfoot, and then their eyes snap to him almost instantly.

“Ryan…?” Lindsay whispers, squinting through the darkness as if that will help her see. She opens her mouth, ready to say something else, but Ryan doesn’t wait around long enough for her to continue; he’s already running.

He dashes through the trees like a wild animal, with his heart in his throat as he heads towards Trevor’s last known location. As he runs, the trees scratch at his arms, their branches carving red, shallow lines into his skin; lines that are sullied with dirt and mud every time he slips on a wet patch of dirt.

It doesn’t stop him though, and soon enough, a clearing opens and Ryan’s confronted with three things.

 _One_ : the sound of Jeremy and Lindsay’s footsteps from behind him. They’ve followed him like he knew they would.

 _Two_ : the last generator splutters to life from across the clearing and Trevor’s frame—untouched and safe—perks up at their arrival.

 _Three_ : a white figure hovers at the edge of the tree line, a hacksaw dangling from her fingers and the edges of her white dress torn and stained. Jack knows they’re there and there’s no way she’s going to let them all leave.

From behind him, a hand touches his shoulder and Ryan jumps. “You—you were meant to be doing the  _generator_ ,” Jeremy hisses, and a fresh wave of guilt hits him. He doesn’t turn around though, just reaches for the hand on his shoulder and squeezes it.

“Keep ‘em safe,” he whispers, sucking in a breath before sprinting at full speed towards Jack, not waiting to hear Jeremy mutter a soft, “what?” in reply.

As he sprints towards her, part of Ryan worries that Jack will divert; that she’ll break right and go for Trevor instead, but she doesn’t. With a strangled gasp and a streak of white, she phases towards him. Her blinks happen faster than  _he_  can blink, but she telegraphs her moves. So when she tries to cut him off, Ryan swerves left and backtracks. He drops a pallet on her, listening to her scratchy scream echo throughout the forest.

He doesn’t look back at the others, he doesn’t let himself hesitate for even a moment. He just drowns out the sounds of their voices through the headset and keeps moving. With his heartbeat louder than an exploded generator, Ryan keeps his attention glued to Jack.

And it only falters when her hacksaw collides with his back, the teeth catching against his skin.

It’s not like he hasn’t been hit before. He’s had a chainsaw embedded in his side and a hatchet stuck in his shoulder. He knows how it feels to be sliced with razor-sharp fingers and jabbed with a hidden blade.

He knows pain, but that doesn’t mean he’s immune to it.

The hit forces a scream out of his throat—something that’s loud and desperate—and the only reason Ryan doesn’t stop running is out of pure muscle memory. Almost instantly, his shirt starts sticking to his back, quickly soaking with blood and as his head swims, he realises he won’t last much longer.

He can’t see the others; it’s only their voices in his ear, words he can’t actually comprehend. But, it doesn’t stop him from slurring out the words, “times up, guys. Don’t keep me waiting,” before Jack swings again.

This time, he goes down. This time, his legs give way and he lands face down in the dirt with a mangled scream. In his ear, three voices mash together in various degrees of panic and as Jack floats him up and onto her shoulder, he croaks out one last, “go.”

Trevor and Lindsay listen, Jeremy does not.

“Ryan, you stupid bastard,” he whispers over the coms, voice cracking slightly and Ryan huffs out a broken laugh.

“Can’t let you keep having all of the fun,” he slurs back, but the words are hollow as the hook forces its way into his chest. The worst part is when Jack pulls away though, pain exploding behind his eyes as gravity takes full hold of him. The hook grinds against his collarbone, opening the wound more and more with each passing second.

And as long, spindly sharp claws start to formalise around him, ready to feed on the little bits of hope he still has, Ryan gasps out his last wet breath. Numbness starts in his toes and spreads through this whole body, and as The Entity takes him, Jeremy’s voice whispers through the coms, falling on deaf ears.

“I’ll see you soon, Rye.”

•••

When Ryan wakes, he’s sitting by a campfire.

For the longest moment, he doesn’t remember who he is. There’s a hollowness inside him, an ache that settles heavily in his chest, almost as if he’s missing something important.

As if someone has gouged out his insides.

As if someone has stolen his heart.

As if  _something_  has taken a part of his  _soul_.

And then it all comes back. The memory of being hooked. The feeling of Jack’s hacksaw striking him. The Entity  _claiming_  him. It hits him hard, knocking the air out of his lungs and Ryan can’t help but double over.

If he focuses hard enough, it almost feels like The Entity is still a part of him. Living under his skin, feeding off his hope,  _thriving_.

It’s Jeremy though, who snaps him out of his thoughts, the lad moving to crouch in front of him. With a hand on Ryan’s knee, one look at Jeremy tells Ryan that he knows  _exactly_  how he’s feeling.

“It fades. When it does, it’ll leave you feeling emptier, but you will get used to it.” Ryan just meets his gaze, slowly blinking back at him.

Across from them, Lindsay hovers by the fire, her gaze darting between them and the embers every few seconds. “So this is how you feel afterwards, huh?” he croaks out and while Jeremy laughs, Ryan can hear that it’s fake.

“I’ve been sacrificed a lot, Ryan,” he whispers, “it’s been a long time since I’ve felt like you do right now.”

A question sits at the tip of Ryan’s tongue, but Jeremy shakes his head as Lindsay finally gives in and moves towards them. She takes a seat next to him on the log, and Ryan expects Jeremy to pull his hand away now that she’s here, but he doesn’t.

Instead, Lindsay just presses in closer and rests her chin on Ryan’s shoulder. Her voice is barely audible when she talks, whispering “thank you,” into his shoulder and Ryan knows that her words are only meant for him. He knows why she’s thanking him.

Still, he waits for the comment, for them to ask why he was watching them. He waits for the anger or the disgust, but nothing comes. And so, Ryan lets himself relax against Lindsay, slowly winding his arm around her to pull her closer. At the same time, Jeremy twists to sit between Ryan’s legs and almost instinctively Ryan’s hand moves to rest at the curve of his neck.

And they wait there, sharing each other’s spaces until it’s time for the next trial. 

Until it’s time to do it all again.


End file.
